Lisbon on Segway

This morning Ian and I took a Segway tour around Lisbon. Our guide and leader was Chris, he was lovely and had great knowledge of the history of Lisbon. It was so much fun and a great way to see this colourful city. We spent the first 30 minutes getting familiar with operating our Segways. We spent time practicing and then had a little race to ensure we were familiar with how fast we could go. Ian won the race.

Our first stop was Praça do Comércio, where Chris encouraged us to tool around a bit on our Segways and gain confidence operating them. Our next stop was the Town Hall, a building that had been destroyed by the Lisbon earthquake, rebuilt and then damaged again by fire, and rebuilt a third time. Today they were hanging the Christmas decorations.

We then headed up. Lisbon is built on seven hills and so there is a lot of climbing up and down the narrow streets. Going up these steep streets on a Segway was wonderful. Going down was initially a little scary but once you worked out how to slow down it was fine. We then headed further up to the Elevador de Santa Justa, where we had wonderful views across Lisbon. The lift was designed by Gustav Eiffel.

We then started heading down, first to Praça Dom Pedro IV and then across to Praça Martim Moniz. We then wound our way up narrow streets, dodging Tuk Tuks and a few aggro drivers to Miradouro da Senhora do Monte. Chris told us that women trying to fall pregnant would come up here to pray to the Virgin Mary. Here we had views over to the 25 De Abril Bridge, the Castelo De São Jorge and over central Lisbon.

We then headed downwards again and, unfortunately, it started to rain so we had a quick stop to put on our ponchos and then kept heading down to the Pantheon, which is in the district of São Vicente de Fora. Our last part of the tour was to wind our way through the narrow and steep streets of the Alfama district before heading back to our starting position. It was a really fun and easy way to see this beautiful city. We passed a lot of wonderful street art on this tour but, unfortunately, we couldn’t take many photos.Read more